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Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Side projects

Part of the reason I love this doing this documentary is because I'm a knitter. Ever night, after dinner is made and eaten, emails are sent, my boyfriend and I curl up on the couch and either watch movies or tv and I knit. I've only been knitting for the last 3 years or so and I'm honesty not every good. I only started purling a year and half in. I mostly taught myself through books (I wonder if I plug my favorite knitting books if they plug my documentary?) and through the encouragement of some of my more crafty friends.

I'm still trying to get crocheting down. My mom is a huge crocheter. She made my baby blanket while I was an infant in her arms. She said she never got into knitting. She's tried to help me with crochet but I just can't get into those hooks.

Here's what I've been working on recently:

Last summer I heard that I should expect to have a new nephew by the spring of this year. Once I heard the good news I started to make my first baby blanket. Since I'm really good at knitting squares and rectangles, I figured I would make a checkerboard square blanket. I cast on 40 knits then I alternated knitting one row then purling the next for 80 rows (classic stockinette stitch). My good friend Julia advised me to knit all the ends so that the ends of each square won't curl up too much. After 10 months, Jackson Douglas Gonzalez has arrived to the world and he has a new blanket...My mom crocheted the edges to give it that more polished look. It's probably not the best blanket ever made, but it was my first blanket and is Jack's first (special) blanket.

After this huge task I really didn't have much inspiration to do anything. I had hit a wall with my knitting. During International Yarn Bombing Day I was hanging out with the Yarn Dawgz and Billy was making a little knitted pouch while we were sitting and hanging out. He ended up giving the pouch to David which David continued to gush about for the rest of our shoot. It really inspired me to try to make one myself.

I randomly switched between knitting and purling. I made it the size of an ipod/iphone and then I gave it to Amanda to cheer up her day. I made it in one sitting but I thought I could do a better job. So then I did this...

Again, it didn't take me long to do and it turned out ok. I still wasn't satisfied. I thought it was time to learn to knit with circular needles and double-sided needles. I took me several tries but ...and what I made was...

A much nicer ipod pouch! I'm pretty proud of myself for accomplishing this.